Logic Viewed as Semeiotics

1.285-287, 304 G-c.1904-2

  285. English philosophers have quite commonly used the
word id ea in a sense approaching to that which I give to
phaneron. But in various ways they have restricted the meaning of it
too much to cover my conception (if conception it can be called),
besides giving a psychological connotation to their word
which I am careful to exclude. The fact that they have the habit
of saying that " there is no such idea " as this or that, in the very
same breath in which they definitely describe the phaneron

  * According to the scheme of classification given in the preceding book,
phenomenology (or phaneroscopy) is the first division of philosophy, which is, in
turn, the second of the sciences of discovery. The present book, to follow that
scheme, should have been preceded by one on mathematics, the first of the
sciences of discovery. Peirce's positive contributions to that science, however,
are too technical for the general reader and his discussions of it are too closely
interwoven with the discussions of other topics to make their inclusion in the
present volume feasible. Most of the contributions to mathematics are to be found
in vols. 3 and 4; the discussions regarding its nature are scattered throughout
all the volumes; see e.g. 247ff.
  ** 284 is from the "Adirondack Lectures, 1905"; 285 287 are from "Logic
viewed as Semeiotics, Introduction Number 2, Phaneroscopy," c. 1904.
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in question, renders their term fatally inapt for my purpose.
  286. There is nothing quite so directly open to observation
as phanerons; and since I shall have no need of referring to any
but those which (or the like of which) are perfectly familiar to
everybody, every reader can control the accuracy of what I
am going to say about them. Indeed, he must actually repeat
my observations and experiments for himself, or else I shall
more utterly fail to convey my meaning than if I were to
discourse of effects of chromatic decoration to a man congenitally
blind. What I term phaneroscopy is that study which,
supported by the direct observation of phanerons and generalizing
its observations, signalizes several very broad classes of
phanerons; describes the features of each; shows that although they
are so inextricably mixed together that no one can be isolated,
yet it is manifest that their characters are quite disparate; then
proves, beyond question, that a certain very short list
comprises all of these broadest categories of phanerons there are;
and finally proceeds to the laborious and difficult task of
enumerating the principal subdivisions of those categories.
  287. It will be plain from what has been said that
phaneroscopy has nothing at all to do with the question of how far the
phanerons it studies correspond to any realities. It religiously
abstains from all speculation as to any relations between its
categories and physiological facts, cerebral or other. It does
not undertake, but sedulously avoids, hypothetical
explanations of any sort. It simply scrutinizes the direct appearances,
and endeavors to combine minute accuracy with the broadest
possible generalization. The student's great effort is not to be
influenced by any tradition, any authority, any reasons for
supposing that such and such ought to be the facts, or any
fancies of any kind, and to confine himself to honest,
singleminded observation of the appearances. The reader, upon his
side, must repeat the author's observations for himself, and
decide from his own observations whether the author's account
of the appearances is correct or not.
  304.... Among phanerons there are certain qualities of
feeling, such as the color of magenta, the odor of attar, the
sound of a railway whistle, the taste of quinine, the quality of
the emotion upon contemplating a fine mathematical
demonstration, the quality of feeling of love, etc. I do not mean the
sense of actually experiencing these feelings, whether primarily
or in any memory or imagination. That is something that
involves these qualities as an element of it. But I mean the
qualities themselves which, in themselves, are mere may-bes,
not necessarily realized. The reader may be inclined to deny
that. If so, he has not fully grasped the point that we are not
considering what is true, not even what truly appears. I ask
him to note that the word red means something when I say that
the precession of the equinoxes is no more red than it is blue,
and that it means just what it means when I say that aniline
red is red. That mere quality, or suchness, is not in itself an
occurrence, as seeing a red object is; it is a mere may-be. Its
only being consists in the fact that there might be such a peculiar,
positive, suchness in a phaneron. When I say it is a quality, I
do not mean that it "inheres" in [a] subject. That is a
phaneron peculiar to metaphysical thought, not involved in the
sensation itself, and therefore not in the quality of feeling,
which is entirely contained, or superseded, in the actual
sensation. The Germans usually call these qualities feelings, feelings
of pleasure or pain. To me this seems to be mere repetition of a
tradition, never subjected to the test of observation. I can
imagine a consciousness whose whole life, alike when wide
awake and when drowsy or dreaming, should consist in nothing
at all but a violet color or a stink of rotten cabbage. It is purely
a question of what I can imagine and not of what psychological
laws permit. The fact that I can imagine this, shows that such
a feeling is not general, in the sense in which the law of
gravitation is general. For nobody can imagine that law to have any
being of any kind if it were impossible that there should exist
any two masses of matter, or if there were no such things as
motion. A true general cannot have any being unless there is
to be some prospect of its sometime having occasion to be

  * From " Logic viewed as Semeiotics, Introduction Number 2, Phaneroscopy,"
continuing 287.

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embodied in a fact, which is itself not a law or anything like a
law. A quality of feeling can be imagined to be without any
occurrence, as it seems to me. Its mere may-being gets along
without any realization at all.